Intel's Galileo Gen 2 Board is the first in a family of Arduino-certified development boards based on Intel® architecture and specifically designed for makers, students, educators, and DIY electronics enthusiasts. Based on the Intel Quark™ SoC X1000, a 32-bit Intel Pentium® processor-class system on a chip (SoC), the genuine Intel processor and native I/O capabilities of the Intel Galileo board (Gen 2) provide a full-featured offering for a wide range of applications. Arduino-Certified and designed to be hardware-, software-, and pin-compatible with a wide range of Arduino Uno R3 shields. Additionally it allows users to incorporate Linux firmware calls in their Arduino sketch programming.

Galileo is designed to support shields that operate at either 3.3V or 5V. The core operating voltage of Galileo is 3.3V. However, a jumper on the board enables voltage translation to 5V at the I/O pins. This provides support for 5V Uno shields and is the default behavior. By switching the jumper position, the voltage translation can be disabled to provide 3.3V operation at the I/O pins.

Of course, the Galileo board is also software compatible with the Arduino Software Development Environment (IDE), which makes usability and introduction a snap. In addition to Arduino hardware and software compatibility, the Galileo board has several PC industry standard I/O ports and features to expand native usage and capabilities beyond the Arduino shield ecosystem. A full sized mini-PCI Express slot, 100Mb Ethernet port, Micro-SD slot, RS-232 serial port, USB Host port, USB Client port, and 8MByte NOR flash come standard on the board.

Block Diagram

Detail of Intel Architecture Supported Features

The genuine Intel processor and surrounding native I/O capabilities of the Clanton SoC provides for a fully featured offering for both the maker community and students alike. It will also be useful to professional developers who are looking for a simple and cost effective development environment to the more complex Intel Atom processor and Intel Core processor-based designs.

Default - 8 MByte Legacy SPI Flash
main purpose is to store the firmware (or bootloader) and the latest
sketch. Between 256KByte and 512KByte is dedicated for sketch storage.
The download will happen automatically from the development PC, so no
action is required unless there is an upgrade that is being added to the
firmware.

Default 512 KByte embedded SRAM, enabled by the firmware by default. No action required to use this feature.

Programming

Galileo can be programmed with the Arduino software (download). When you are ready to upload the sketch to the board, program Galileo through the USB Client port by selecting "Intel Galileo" as your board in the Arduino IDE. Connect Galileo's port labeled USB Client (the one closest to the Ethernet) to your computer. For details, see the reference, tutorials and Intel Galileo Getting Started Guide. Rather than requiring a physical press of the reset button before an upload, Galileo is designed to be reset by software running on a connected computer.

When the board boots up two scenarios are possible:

If a sketch is present in persistent storage, it is executed

If no sketch present, the board waits for upload commands from the IDE

If a sketch is executing, you can upload from the IDE without having to press the reset button on the board. The sketch is stopped; the IDE waits for the upload state, and then starts the newly uploaded sketch.

Pressing the reset button on the board restarts a sketch if it is executing and resets any attached shields.

Galileo 2 Software Stack

Automatic (Software) Reset

Rather than requiring a physical press of the reset button before an upload, Galileo is designed in a way that allows it to be reset by software running on a connected computer. USB CDC-ACM control signals are used to transition Galileo from run-time to bootloader mode. The Arduino software uses this capability to allow you to upload code by simply pressing the upload button in the Arduino environment. For details, see the Intel Galileo Getting Started Guide.

Physical Characteristics

The Galileo Gen 2 is 100.0mm long and 70.0mm wide respectively, with the USB connectors (standard type A & micro-USB type B), UART jack, Ethernet connector, and power jack extending beyond the former dimension. Four screw holes allow the board to be attached to a surface or case. Note that the distance between digital pins 7 and 8 is 160 mil (0.16"), is not an even multiple of the 100 mil spacing of the other pins.